Finding the Fox

My first book in English! It’s a non-fiction book about the natural and cultural history of the red fox. Lucy Moffatt did a great job translating my Norwegian text into English. The book is published by Greystone Books, and will be available from March 26, 2024. You can order it online already, though.

The book has previously been published in Norwegian by Kagge forlag, 2021, as “Reven. Portrett av et villdyr” and in German by Suhrkamp/Insel, 2023, as “Das verborgene Leben der Füchse”.

Hedgehog love

Back in June, we had a bit of hedgehog drama in our garden: Three males were fighting over a female, and one of them finally mated with her, after chasing off the others and going through a kind of dance with her for some time. Now it’s October and it’s gray and wet outside, and I finally found the time to edit a little movie that documents the event. It’s about seven minutes long.

pinnsvin-ny-20200602-9707.jpg

Von Walen und Menschen

Today I discovered a nice review of Von Walen und Menschen, the German-language edition of my whale book, translated by Martin Bayer and published by Residenz Verlag. In Madam Wien magazine, Astrid Kuffner writes: "Als Geschichte eines ganzen Wirtschaftszweigs ist das Buch sehr spannend zu lesen."

I feels great to have the book out in German and available to such a large audience. Last week I had the opportunity to discuss the book at a couple of events at the Frankfurter Buchmesse and in a little less than two weeks, I will visit Vienna and the literary festival Buch Wien.

Residenz Verlag stand at the Frankfurter Buchmesse.

Residenz Verlag stand at the Frankfurter Buchmesse.

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reviews Das verborgene Leben der Meisen

A blue tit in my garden last weeK
Kai Spanke reviewed my bird book for the major German newspaper FAZ. I had some help in interpreting the review and I was quite pleased with it. So I would encourage anyone who reads German to have a look...
If you would like to buy the book, it is available in many bookstores, including:
It is available as an ebook as well as in print. 

Next stop: Hamburg!

The German edition of my book, Das verborgene Leben der Meisen, has been out for a month. This weekend, I was happy to discover that literary critic Annemarie Stoltenberg in NDR (Norddeutscher Rundfunk) included it in her list of book recommendations for Christmas.

This week, I'm going to Hamburg, to take part in Nordische Literaturtage.

I will present my bird book in a "New Voices from Norway" panel along with novelists Nina Lykke, Birger Emanuelsen and Tiril Broch Aakre.


Das verborgene Leben der Meisen: First responses to the German Edition

German book bloggers have posted their first reviews of my bird book this week.

And they do like it!

"Dieses Sachbuch bietet einen unterhaltsamen und interessanten Einblick in das Leben der Meisen. Hobbyornithologen werden hiermit ihre Freude haben."
sommerlese.blogspot.no/

 "Von Herzen vergebe ich diesem Buch fünf von fünf möglichen Sternen und empfehle es natürlich weiter."
angisbuecherkiste.blogspot.no/

 "Fazit: Ein schön zu lesendes und informatives Buch über faszinierende Tiere vor der eigenen Haustür. Sehr empfehlenswert für jeden Vogelfreund und durch die schöne Aufmachung auch ein tolles Geschenk."
wasliestdu.de/

"Normalerweise habe ich diese Kategorie nicht in meinen Rezis, aber hier erschien sie mir nötig. Denn "Das verborgene Leben der Meisen" ist ein echtes Schmuckstück! Format, Cover und die vielen Bilder machen es zu einem Augenschmaus - nicht nur beim Lesen, sondern auch im Regal."
lovelybooks.de/

Five out of five stars from each of these. Thank you!



"Mit dem Auto erreicht man die Halbinsel Nesodden am Oslofjord aus südöstlicher Richtung, da sie dort mit dem Festland verbunden ist. Nimmt man die Landstraße 156, die Hauptverkehrsader, die an der Ostseite der Landzunge entlangführt, weichen die Fichten bald Weizenfeldern, Reiterhöfen und, je nach Jahreszeit, Erdbeer- oder Brennholzverkaufsständen. "

It's a thrill to read my own work translated into German, including descriptions of good old Nesodden!

A few pages from Das verborgene Leben der Meisen, translated by Paul Berf, was recently posted online by the publisher, Insel Verlag. The book should be out in a couple of weeks.

http://www.suhrkamp.de/download/Blickinsbuch/9783458177234.pdf

Two newspaper reviews of the Finnish edition!

My book about the secret life of the great tit and the blue tit is reviewed in the major Helsinki paper Iltalehti and also in another paper called Kouvolan Sanomat. As far as I understand the reviews of "Tiaisten salainen elämä" (Meisenes hemmelige liv) are quite favorable!

Here are the results from the Finnish jury

Recently my songbird book - about the great tit and the blue tit, which are among the most common garden birds across Europe - was was translated from Norwegian and published in Finnish. It is strange to see your own work in a language you hardly understand a single word of!

 A few Finnish book bloggers have read and reviewed Tiaisten salainen elämä / Meisenes hemmelige liv. And unless Google translate is playing tricks on me, they all do like it.

 Thanks for reviewing, in any case. It means a lot that someone takes the effort to spread the word about new books.

 Here are the reviews:



Children's aquarium book published

The Aquarium Book for Kids is now available in Norwegian.This is a not an ebook but a regular book printed on high quality paper with a hard cover. It is illustrated with photographs, mostly my own, and the pages are made by a professional book designer. I am really proud of the result!


The book can be ordered online right now from my own site akvariebok.no. It will also be distributed through booksellers and pet shops across Norway.

Glowlight tetras spawning


I just recorded this video of my glowlight tetras (Hemigrammus erythrozonus) spawning. You can clearly see how the female rotates and is turned upside down as the eggs are released. You can also see that the parents eat a lot of the eggs. The corys they share the tank with eat eggs too, so there will be no fry hatching in this tank. I have lots of glowlight tetra fry in a separate breeding tank, though.

For two days only: Get the zebrafish ebook for free

Sunday November 18 and Monday November 19, I’m giving away my new ebook for free on Amazon, or Amazon’s UK site. It’s called Meet the Zebrafish. A Short Guide to Keeping, Breeding and Understanding the Zebrafish (Danio rerio) in Your Home Aquarium. It should be of interest to home aquarium keepers in particular.

The purpose of the free promotion is to get people to recommend the book to friends, or to leave a review on Amazon or elsewhere. But there’s no obligation, of course. Just download and enjoy.

And in case you didn’t know: You don’t need a Kindle reader to read Amazon’s Kindle ebooks. Just download one of their free reader apps for smartphones, tablets or regular computers. I buy quite a few ebooks from Amazon myself, and I read them on my iPad.

My zebrafish book is published on Amazon

This little ebook is written for anyone who keeps zebrafish at home, or who considers buying zebrafish. It combines my own experience with keeping and breeding zebrafish at home, with information drawn from scientific studies of zebrafish biology. The book is written in a simple, accessible style. You will find practical advice here as well as interesting information that helps you appreciate how complex and interesting beings zebrafishes are. You can read the ebook on your iPhone, iPad, Android device, PC or Mac using Amazon's free reading app.

Zebrafish (which are also known as zebra danios) are beautiful, lively little aquarium fish that are easy to keep. Zebrafish are a great choice for your first aquarium, and the perfect starter fish for anyone who wants to try fish breeding. Zebrafish are easy to find and cheap to purchase, but you could study them for a lifetime. As a matter of fact, some people do: zebrafish are commonly held and studied in biological labs. There is even a serious, scientific journal called Zebrafish.

The text answers questions such as: How can I breed zebrafish if I only have a single aquarium? Why do zebrafish sometimes fight? How do young zebrafish recognize their siblings among other zebrafish of the same age? Why do some zebrafish have spots instead of stripes? The book also contains my own photographs showing zebrafish behavior and their life cycle. The images are in color, but they also work well on a black-and-white kindle screen.
Contents include:
• Zebrafish in the wild
• Zebrafish behavior
• Creating a good zebrafish habitat in your aquarium
• Feeding your zebrafish
• Breeding zebrafish
• Zebrafish and science

The book is for sale on Amazon. The full title is: Meet the Zebrafish. A Short Guide to Keeping, Breeding and Understanding the Zebrafish (Danio rerio) in Your Home Aquarium.